


someday the smoke will all burn off

by ZucchiniBread



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: AU, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I mean I guess Taang if you feel like traumatized 13 year olds can be romantic but whatever, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Character Death, Post-Finale, Taang - Freeform, i never watched LOK or read the comics sorry, i wrote this at 2am so, not terribly AU if you're just looking at the show alone, platonic taang, probably, theres some tense switching I didn’t catch sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 16:43:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16538357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZucchiniBread/pseuds/ZucchiniBread
Summary: A cry built in her gut, low and guttural and rising, and she let it loose and beneath them the ground shook ferociously.And at the end he still stood there, waiting for her. Walked towards her slowly when he noticed her shoulders shaking. Knelt next to her and asked, “Did they love you?” and the question was so stupid she stopped crying for moment.





	someday the smoke will all burn off

Ozai’s procession began at the border. There would be nowhere the sun does not set on Earth Kingdom ashes, it was said. It was symbolic, all for show. He only made it to a forest, at the edge of the ocean, before being interrupted. But what a waste of precious time. And Ozai had thought of this, yes, and sent smaller processions out to raze the Earth Kingdom. Ba Sing Se, of course, would be made into a gleaming capital. New Ozai could be fortified into a military outpost quickly once the residential areas were destroyed. Villages were unimportant. Burn many, burn them quickly. No need for refugees to go flooding into the cities.

Gaoling burned. At least, a good deal of it did. A city of stone, it did not catch easily, but Sozin left his scar.

Buildings too burnt to be saved were collapsed, quickly, and rebuilt. Many dead were too burnt to identify.

To Toph, it was unrecognizable. The place where she had spent hours and days and months committing the balanced weight of the building, every hill and stream and hole dug by cats and komodo tortoises to memory. Erased. Gone, Rebuilt into something foreign and strange. Half the city marred and scarred and rebuilt and the whole thing smelling to her sensitive nose of sick, burnt meat. It sent a cold hand down her spine.

She relied on memory to get there. A twenty minutes’ walk from the arena. Just past the pottery shop.

The property was gone. Empty lot, nothing took it place. No precedent set. Toph sat in the ash, where the wall once divided the street and the garden. Nothing was left to show of it all. Nothing of what was once so important.

Of course she had heard. She hears everything.

And whispers of decimated Goaling, of the destroyed homes in Omashu had traveled to the Avatar’s caravan quickly. Without her asking, they took her. And in Gaoling, she heard more, whispers of the mayor, murdered in his home in the looting and panic that ensued. Whispers of the school which burnt with twenty students inside. Whispers of the Beifong’s, the disgraced Beifong’s whose daughter had eloped, who were burnt alive inside their own home.

And she sat in the ash where the wall once stood and ran her fingers along the gritty, unfamiliar earth, and tried desperately not to think of what she smelled. At her back was a city she no longer knew.

Below her, the once comforting earth offered her nothing.

Nothing was left. Nothing.

Steps.

“Go,” she growled.

They stopped at her words, but didn’t retreat.

“Leave me alone,” she said, working very hard on keeping her voice from cracking. He started walking again, sat on the same line she did, where the wall met the street. There must a visible line, if he could tell. He was not close, just barely nearby. She could tell every time he glanced at her. It grated on her nerves.

“Leave,” she tried once more.

“No one should be alone in this,” he said, looking away. She sniffed, the ash and dust tickling her nose, nothing else.

“You don’t…” she stopped herself. Insensitive words; no one she can think of cannot relate in some way or another. Him, least of all. She scooted closer to him, until they were just a few feet away. He waited quietly for her to find her words in the smoke.

“How can you stand it?” she asked, voice finally breaking. “How do-“ she swallowed, closed her watering eyes against the hot smoke.

“I left a lot unfinished,” he started. Her hair flew in her face, a breeze behind her. “I had friends I should have made things right with.”

She listened intently, head bowed but angled towards him.

“I don’t know if I ever told you, but I ran away. I left things unfinished, and I hurt the person I loved most without making it right before he died.” Aang wiped his eyes, and moved closer to Toph. A foot of ash between them.

“When,” she licked her lips, trying to speak. Choking on ash, she closed her mouth and pressed her hand to the ground.

“Never,” he said. “It’s never smaller, or over. All you can do is honor them and wait for it to get easier.”

“Easier?” she asked sharply.

“Not better. Just easier. It’s hard, and hard to bear, and later it’s still going to be big and awful and it’s going to hurt when you least expect it but you learn how to bear it.”

“I know that. _I know_ ,” she said, placing her hands on her knees very carefully to keep them from shaking. “But that’s just grief. I never fixed my mess.”

“No. And you can’t, now.” The wind blew behind them, and a strong stench hit her.

She stood, abruptly, and walked away from him, towards where the house was, and she forgot to count her steps but she knelt in what might have been the dining room.

Rested her palms against the earth and wondered if they went quickly.

He stayed by the wall, standing and watching, but not leaving. That made it worse. His gaze pressing into her back, her family gone and him telling her there’s nothing she can do about it. A cry built in her gut, low and guttural and rising, and she let it loose and beneath them the ground shook ferociously.

And at the end he still stood there, waiting for her. Walked towards her slowly when he noticed her shoulders shaking. Knelt next to her and asked, “Did they love you?” and the question was so stupid she stopped crying for moment.

Of course, she thinks but her throat burns and the air is putrid and she’s breathing shallowly so all she can do is nod.

“Then you may not have gotten closure but in the end, they loved you and you love them. And even though they’re gone, your parents’ love for you hasn’t died.” She flinched at the word, turning away from him.

“Can I have a minute?” she asked.

He nodded, left, down to where the next door building ended, turned away from her. Out of earshot. Back facing her so he cannot see. Close enough to be a comfort.

She leaned forward, rested her head against the too-warm earth like a fever. Ash dusted her forehead, nose, cheeks, lips, hands, knees, back, feet, everywhere and she let herself cry until the earth grew a little cooler and her head ached and her eyes felt swollen in her skull.

When she was done, she stood, walked towards where he still waited, exactly where he had been, still faced away to give her privacy. She grabbed his sleeve, and only then did he turn to her. A beat passed, and for a split second she worried he’d say something stupid like _I’m sorry_ , but he was quiet and let her hold his sleeve as they walked away from the ashes of Gaoling.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is probably an AU I just never engaged with any canon besides the show. Also I'm a little ashamed to be out here in college writing ATLA fanfiction at 2 on a Monday night, but not ashamed enough to not do it.


End file.
